Considering you are reading this blog, you already know that YouTube is a big part of the influencer marketing strategy for most marketers. 70% of people have bought a product after seeing it being promoted on YouTube, which makes YouTube a huge opportunity for businesses that want to increase sales.
That’s why companies in various industries, from beauty and fashion to tech and gaming, are partnering with YouTube creators to target potential customers aged 25 to 34 in order to achieve their campaign objectives.
But, we are aware that partnering with influencers and launching a campaign is easier said than done. So, we’ve put together a list of the best influencer marketing campaigns from big brands, so you can analyze the campaigns, see what works best, which are the biggest mistakes, and create a youtube influencer marketing campaign for your brand within a week.
6 Campaigns you can run with YouTubers
When you collaborate with YouTubers you can ask them to create a sponsored video or series of videos that feature your products or services or even to incorporate your brand into their regular content in some way.
The opportunities are endless and the choice depends on the campaign objectives. In general, a successful collaboration would involve the YouTuber creating engaging content that resonates with their audience and effectively promotes the brand. Brands, on the other hand, need to provide support and resources to help the YouTuber create high-quality content.
If you don’t know where to start, here are just a few types of YouTube influencer marketing you can use in your next collaboration with an influencer:
1. Product unboxing and product reviews
You can partner with YouTubers to create product unboxing and review videos. This is an effective way to showcase your products and provide potential customers with valuable information.
These types of collaborations are best for increasing product exposure, building credibility, and potentially increasing sales.
2. Sponsored Videos
For sponsored videos you need to pay a pre-agreed commission to YouTubers to create content that will promote your products or services. These types of collaborations are best for creating targeted marketing campaigns and reaching a specific audience.
3. Product placement
When you do product placement partnerships with YouTube influencers, your products will be featured in a YouTuber’s videos without explicit mention or promotion. This can be a subtle way for a brand to showcase its products and increase exposure.
4. How-To videos
Collaborating with YouTubers to create How-To videos is a valuable way for your brand to demonstrate the use and benefits of your products. These types of collaborations are best for providing potential customers with valuable information and building credibility.
5. Contest Campaigns
When you partner with YouTubers to create contest campaigns you have an opportunity to engage with your target audience and increase brand awareness. You can get very creative when it comes to the contest idea. Depending on your products, you can ask people to create content with your product, challenge them to do something, engage with your content, and more.
These types of collaborations involve a YouTuber promoting a contest or giveaway organized by the brand. Contests are best for spreading brand awareness, as well as collecting user-generated content that can be further used to promote your products.
6. YouTube Live
Lastly, collaborating with YouTube influencers through YouTube Live content is an opportunity for your brand to connect with your audience in real time and create a sense of community.
These types of collaborations can be used to showcase new products, answer customer questions, and create a deeper connection between your brand and the customer.
5 Benefits of Launching Campaigns With YouTube Influencers
Above we’ll discuss the top five benefits of launching YouTube influencer marketing campaigns. By understanding these advantages, you can determine whether collaborating with influencers aligns with your business goals.
1. Increased brand awareness
2. Targeted reach
This mostly applies if you partner with influencers from a specific niche, for example – gaming influencers. You will be able to reach a specific audience that is interested in gaming.
Furthermore, even if the YouTube influencer is not from a certain niche it could have a following that aligns with your brand’s target audience. Hence, you can effectively reach the desired demographic and increase the chances of converting viewers into customers.
3. Higher conversion rates
Influencer marketing can be an effective way to drive conversions, as it’s proven that influencers often have a high level of trust with their audience. When an influencer recommends your products or services, their audience is more likely to take action and make a purchase. That’s why YouTube influencer marketing conversion rates are 5X higher than YouTube ads.
4. Improved SEO
5. Greater credibility
5 YouTube Influencer Marketing Campaigns That Delivered
1. Honey partnered with MrBeast, TheAceFamily, and Michael Reaves
Honey is a Google Chrome extension that finds discount codes every time you are shopping online. It automatically applies the discount to your order and saves you money. On top of that, the extension is free to install.
To promote the extension, Honey sponsored a total of 63 youtube videos and worked with 56 influencers of which 10 were creators of the most recognizable YouTube channels. All influencers created sponsored videos and were describing how Honey works to encourage their subscribers to install the Chrome extension.
The YouTube influencer marketing campaign was a huge success as Honey drew in $9,830,037.98 in IMV and more than 60M total views on YouTube. After the campaign Honey kept the attention of online shoppers, and it becomes more important as people are shopping online more than ever.
2. Subaru partnered with Devin Graham
Subaru launched an influencer campaign on YouTube aiming to attract the attention of millennial buyers. The campaign used videos from influencers and real Subaru Impreza owners showcasing the car in various locations.
For this campaign, Subaru partnered with Devin Graham, a YouTube influencer that currently has more than 6M subscribers. The collaboration entailed Devin publishing a video of him and his friends trying out the Subaru Impreza. They were taking turns on a slip-and-slide that propelled them off a 500-foot cliff.
Safety features, fuel economy, and horsepower still are the most important things potential buyers look for. But, embracing the emotional aspect of buying a Subaru car also plays a big part in the decision-making. That’s why the #MeetAnOwner campaign focused on the emotional aspect of owning the Subaru Impreza.
Subaru already promoted facts, features, numbers, and statistics using different marketing strategies, so when it came to influencer campaigns they knew that the right thing to do is to create more emotional YouTube videos.
3. Marriott partnered with JacksGap and other influencers
Video is one of the most potent marketing weapons for businesses in the travel industry. So, Marriott invested a huge part of the budget to set up in-house video production.
Next, as they wanted to attract next-generation millennial travelers and form an emotional connection with them, Marriott implemented YouTube influencer marketing campaigns. They reached out to YouTube influencers, including JacksGap, to create video content that was produced by Marriott’s Global Content Studio.
JacksGap, which has 3.68M subscribers, created a series of three short films for Marriott. The hotel chain has also launched a series of monthly webisodes called Marriott Rewards’ Year of Surprises, featuring celebrities giving “the surprise of a lifetime” to “communities across the world”. The first episode was presented by basketball player Jordan Farmar.
Furthermore, Marriott partnered with musicians to create behind-the-scenes videos when performing and staying in the hotel, directors to create short movies, etc. The investment in YouTube creators increased Marriott’s credibility and solidified the company’s position as the world’s largest and most global lodging company.
4. Squarespace partnered with multiple influencers from different niches
Squarespace, a website-building tool, partnered with popular YouTube channels in various industries such as science, gaming, and pop culture to promote their service through strategic video integrations and original content.
They partnered with AsapSCIENCE, Minute Physics, Good Mythical Morning, Philip DeFranco, Tyler Oakley, Screen Junkies, and other YouTube creators that delivered content in a tone and style their fans would respond to.
The primary goal of this YouTube influencer marketing campaign was to increase sign-ups for Squarespace’s website-building services, while also raising awareness and engagement for the company.
And they did. With the evergreen approach to educational videos, the campaign got 34M views on YouTube, more than 58M likes, and increased signups for Squarespace’s website builder.
The main advantage of Squarespace was sponsoring educational video content with the goal of driving long-term awareness. These educational videos were designed to remain relevant for years to come, as users continue to seek out educational content, unlike pop culture videos that often lose their relevance within a few years.
5. OnePlus partnered with Unbox Therapy
OnePlus has a strong presence on social media and has a reputation for creating appealing advertisements for its products. Two years ago, OnePlus created a YouTube influencer campaign with influential tech YouTubers, including Unbox Therapy, which is owned by Lewis Hilsenteger.
The YouTube channel features unboxings and reviews of tech devices as well as large giveaways. Hence, for the collaboration with OnePlus, Lewis recorded OnePlus 8T Unboxing video that has over 2M views on YouTube.
Besides the unboxing video and product review, OnePlus also organized a contest in which Lewis gave OnePlus 6 to one lucky winner. Furthermore, the winner also recorded and published an unboxing video on YouTube so the campaign was a huge success when it came to creating hype around the new product.
How to find YouTube influencers that are best to promote your brand
Even though it might sound like YouTube influencer marketing is a breeze, there are still a few challenges you have to face until you start getting results. One of the biggest challenges is finding the right YouTube influencers that will spread the message to your target audience.
People can easily spot inauthentic or insincere endorsements, so it is important for the partnership to be authentic and for the influencer to genuinely believe in and be excited about the brand and its products or services.
Plus, 67% of brands are concerned about influencer fraud. That’s why it’s crucial to have precise YouTube influencer data, and fortunately, there are data providers and tools that can help you select only the right influencers and maximize the results of your YouTube influencer marketing campaign.
YouTube influencer data providers
There is a big difference between youtube influencer platforms and influencer data providers. While influencer marketing platforms give you engagement rate, average likes, etc., influencer data providers like ourselves go a mile further and give brands very detailed insights for each influencer such as
- What influencers post
- Do they have brand partnerships or not
- What kind of links do they promote
- Do they monetize
- And other data points per the client’s requirements.
This data is allowing brands to identify influencers who align with their target audience and values.
For example, if you are a beauty brand that needs millennial women from Texas that are interested in vegan beauty brands and have between 5k and 10k followers on Instagram, you can reach out to us and we can give you a list of YouTube influencers that match that criteria.
In addition, we manually check the list of influencers before we sent it to our clients, ensuring that all creators on the list are authentic and transparent in their endorsements and don’t have fake followers.
Hence, you can confidently and effectively find and contact YouTubers that align with your campaign goals.
Influencer platforms
These platforms offer comprehensive data on influencers’ audience demographics, engagement rates, and content topics, allowing you to identify influencers who align with your target audience and values.
For example, if you are a fashion brand targeting young adults, an influencer platform can help you find influencers with a large following of young adults who have high engagement rates on their fashion-related content.
Additionally, many influencer platforms also offer features such as collaboration management and performance tracking. This makes it easy for brands to contact YouTubers, manage their partnerships, and track the results of their campaigns.
YouTube search
Lastly, you can use YouTube itself as a tool to find the right YouTubers for your upcoming campaign. You only need to search for keywords related to your brand or industry and browse through the results.
For example, if you are a wellness brand, you can search for keywords like “wellness” or “healthy living” on YouTube and browse through the channels that come up to find influencers who create content in those areas. This approach has the advantage of being free and easily accessible, as most brands already have a presence on YouTube.
However, it is time-consuming to manually search for and evaluate potential influencers. You also won’t be able to access detailed data on influencers’ audience demographics and engagement rates, making it harder to determine which influencers are the best fit for your brand.
Overall, while using YouTube can be a useful approach for finding influencers, it may be more efficient and effective to use specialized influencer platforms or influencer data providers.
Conclusion
In conclusion, YouTube influencer marketing can be a highly effective way for eCommerce brands, startups from all industries, creator economy companies, etc., to reach their target audience and drive sales.
The case studies in this article show the diverse range of strategies and approaches you can take when collaborating with YouTube influencers.
Some key takeaways from these case studies above include the importance of authenticity, the value of long-term partnerships, and the potential for creative and innovative campaigns.
However, if you are about to launch YouTube influencer marketing campaigns for your brand, remember to avoid the biggest mistake that brands can make when working with influencers – failing to adequately research and vet potential partners.
Evaluate influencers’ audience demographics, engagement rates, and content, and ensure that they are working with authentic and reliable partners.
Lastly, it’s undebatable that this strategy will grow in popularity in the coming years. So, if you are considering using YouTube influencer marketing in your campaigns, reach out to us, and let’s discuss how we can help you stand out from the crowd.
We can help you find the perfect YouTube influencers, provide you with YouTuber’s emails, and even contact YouTubers on your behalf.
